Mak­ing the most of your LinkedIn pro­file

THE power of LinkedIn lies in the num­ber of po­ten­tial con­tacts it can give its mem­bers dur­ing their search for the per­fect job. What bet­ter way, then, to learn about max­i­miz­ing the power of LinkedIn than through the col­lec­tive knowl­edge of th­ese mem­bers?

That’s the think­ing be­hind an event held last month at cam­puses across the Seat­tle area called #Rock­YourPro­file, which gath­ered about 200 lo­cal business own­ers, stu­dents and job seek­ers to dis­cuss best prac­tices for de­vel­op­ing an on­line pres­ence.

For this first-ever #Rock­YourPro­file event, one of the main top­ics was im­prov­ing LinkedIn pro­files. LinkedIn spokesper­son Crys­tal Braswell shares five of the ac­tion­able steps that the group came up with: Start at the be­gin­ning. Your head­line is the first –– and pos­si­bly only –– de­scrip­tion of your per­sonal brand that many peo­ple will see, so it has to be per­fect.

Think of the words your col­leagues use to de­scribe your stand­out qual­i­ties. Sug­ges­tions in­clude: “IT support man­ager and trusted Mac ex­pert” or “Ex­pe­ri­enced ad­min as­sis­tant who never misses a dead­line.” What’s in a sum­mary? Sum­maries of 40 words or more are im­por­tant be­cause they show up first in re­cruiters’ and hir­ing man- agers’ search re­sults.

Avoid vague buzz­words like “or­ga­nized” and “mo­ti­vated,” and be spe­cific. For in­stance, if you’re a soft­ware en­gi­neer, men­tion up front the pro­gram­ming lan­guages you know. Show, don’t just tell. Pro­vide spe­cific ex­am­ples of your ac­com­plish­ments when­ever pos­si­ble. If most of your work in­volves vi­su­als, LinkedIn al­lows you up­load pic­tures, videos and doc­u­ments to help sep­a­rate your pro­file from oth­ers in your in­dus­try. Get per­sonal. With tra­di­tional re­sumes, adding a self-por­trait or other per­sonal de­tails is usu­ally frowned upon for rea­sons hav­ing to do with ex­po­sure to dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suits.

But in LinkedIn pro­files, th­ese de­tails are not just tol­er­ated, they are ex­pected – pro­files with pho­tos are ac­tu­ally 14 times more likely to be viewed than ones with­out.

Feel free to men­tion your in­ter­ests out­side the pro­fes­sional realm – you never know when your pas­sion for ve­gan cui­sine or Iron Man com­pe­ti­tions may pique the in­ter­est of a hir­ing man­ager. Be thor­ough. In cy­berspace, there is no onepage limit. Pro­files are 12 times more likely to be viewed if you have more than one po­si­tion listed on your work his­tory, so don’t hold back on the num­ber of jobs you’ve held.

You also can get an av­er­age of 10 times more pro­file views if you list your ed­u­ca­tional cre­den­tials. Make sure your pro­file is com­plete and up to date.

THE power of LinkedIn lies in the num­ber of po­ten­tial con­tacts it can give its mem­bers.